For Karen Allen, her first day filming “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” with Harrison Ford involved excitement, adventure and very painful elbows.
“For our first scene, we’re in a truck that’s barreling down a very bumpy road,” remembers Allen, “and we have to throw ourselves through this metal frame. The stunt guys were saying, ‘Do you want elbow pads?’ And we were both, ‘Oh, no.’ Then around take three, we were like, ‘Could you throw those elbow pads in here?’ “
Allen laughs at the memory, which we can now relive with her as the fourth installment of the “Indiana Jones” series hits DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday in a two-disc special edition. (A box set with all four “Indiana Jones” films will also be available.)
Among the disc’s features are production documentaries showing how many of the movie’s elaborate action sequences were filmed, including a scene in which Ford’s Indy and Allen’s Marion Ravenwood get stuck in quicksand. As Allen explains, this scene caused the cast and crew some hardship.
“They had built these metal vacuum tubes under the sand that were supposed to suck us down, and they were having all kinds of problems with them,” says Allen. “So we’d get right in the middle of the scene, and all of a sudden one of the tubes would start making this incredible noise.”
As a result, a scene scheduled for several hours took more than two itchy and uncomfortable days. “We were covered in sand,” recalls Allen. “Every opening in my clothing was filled with sand.”
These difficulties were caused in part because director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas chose not to rely too much on CGI effects, Allen says.
“Most of what we were doing was
real, live action, and I think Steven and George wanted it that way,” says Allen. “They built these extraordinary sets. I think in my entire 3½ months of shooting, there were only about two or three days we were in front of a blue screen.”
The result, for Allen, was touchingly familiar and great fun.
“We were just looking at each other and laughing,” she says of herself and Ford, “and thinking, Can you believe we’re doing this again?”